A glass paperweight, containing blobs of colour distributed seemingly randomly throughout. When turned and viewed from just the right direction though, what appeared to be froth becomes detail, and the intricate picture reveals itself.-- Detly, May 09 2004 Reflected image (see station 4) http://www.arborsci...CoolStuff/cool9.htmAnamorphic images are purposely distorted during their creation and require reflection in a cylindrical or conical mirror to make them intelligible. [not_only_but_also, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] digital sundial http://www.digitals...com/background.html [xaviergisz, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] have them spread out, and 3d objects could be made, maybe even more then one-- swimr, May 09 2004 Perhaps with very fast computers, combinations of blobs could be worked out that present more than one picture depending on the angle...
Oh wait! That's a hologram.
But the "low resolution" version that you are suggesting would be neat to see. I'm for it.-- James Newton, May 09 2004 Love it. I Posted one a little like this but with twisted strips of metal and glass.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 10 2004 Excellent idea and title. I once had the idea of building a sculpture like this. It would have consisted of these odd shapes jutting from the landscape, but if you looked from the right direction, they'd merge to form a company logo.-- ldischler, May 10 2004 nice (+)-- neilp, May 10 2004 knick-knack heaven. they have similar things to this- 3D image-globes in glass of Dolphins swimming or Mt.Rushmore.
Go for it!-- macncheesy, May 10 2004 indeed nice (+)-- hazel, May 10 2004 nice indeed +-- k_sra, May 10 2004 Nice. Nice indeed. (+)-- lintkeeper2, May 10 2004 Nice.-- Letsbuildafort, May 10 2004 Indeed.-- half, May 10 2004 [Idischler] - There's a sculpture by a roundabout in this city somewhere, and people complain that it's just a twisted hunk of metal. And then I point out that that little stand on the opposite corner is where you look from to see the "impossible tribar."-- Detly, May 10 2004 This reminds me of a speculative article in Scientific American many years ago about a digital sun dial. It comprised a transparent object with opaque bits distributed within it. The sun rays would stream through the object and cast the shadow of the current digital time onto a nearby surface.-- xaviergisz, May 10 2004 The adventure game 'Starship Titanic' has a few sculptures like this. When viewed from the correct angle, the cube spells out 'this', 'that' and 'other,' the passwords to the mailing system in the game.-- RayfordSteele, May 12 2004 Simple, yet aesthetically pleasing. Have a bun.-- DesertFox, May 14 2004 A fine idea, apart from being impossible to make. Years ago one of the national labs had this idea for verifying nuclear weapons by painting them. The paint would have metal flecks in it that would have some random orientation once dried. So if you took pictures of the painted weapon from various angles, there would be distinctive glint patterns, quite impossible to reproduce. Same thing here.-- ldischler, May 14 2004 Okay, I just said it’s impossible to make, so here’s how you do it. You print your duck on one face of a clear sheet of plastic and then dice it up into tiny cubes. Then you stack those cubes with a bunch of blank cubes, so that only along one axis all the printed faces line up. Vacuum impregnate with a clear resin having the same index of refraction as the cubes. Finish exterior to a pleasing spherical shape. Polish. Voila, a duck. If you're close to it, you'll probably have to keep one eye closed to see it right. BTW: In principle, you could design it to show a duck in one eye, and a chicken in the other. But that's not all that easy.-- ldischler, May 14 2004 random, halfbakery